JUPITER AND THE MOON: When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look south. The Moon is passing Jupiter in the constellation Taurus. It's a pretty close encounter visible even through city lights. Sky maps:Feb. 17, Feb. 18.

M-CLASS SOLAR FLARE: New sunspot AR1675 has just unleashed the most intense flare of the year so far, an M1.9-class explosion at 1550 UT on Feb. 17th. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured a double-flash of extreme UV radiation from the explosion:

First-look coronagraph images from SOHO and the twin STEREO probes suggest that this explosion did not produce a coronal mass ejection (CME). Geomagnetic storms are therefore unlikely. Earth's upper atmosphere, however, probably did experience a minor wave of ionization caused by the UV flash shown above. www.spaceweather.com